In many enterprises (e.g., companies, governmental organizations, educational or research organizations, and so forth), communications networks are implemented to enable the transport of information among users and devices. Examples of such networks include local area networks (LANs), wide area networks, the Internet, and so forth. Communications networks typically include switching nodes (such as Ethernet switches) that are able to receive packets, read the target address of each received packet, and forward each packet to the appropriate port associated with the target network segment.
Multilink trunking or aggregation techniques are often used to allow bundling of sets of parallel physical links into aggregated logical trunks. Examples of techniques that allow for such bundling of physical links into aggregated logical trunks include multilink trunking (such as multilink trunking defined by the Split Multilink Trunking Architecture developed by Nortel Networks Limited) or the link aggregation technique defined by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.3. SMLT allows for an aggregated network trunk to be split between different physical switches to provide a more robust network solution due to switch redundancy.
Current multilink trunking or link aggregation techniques are hardware dependent and involve heavy interlinking between the lower protocol layers (that enable the multilink trunking or link aggregation) and upper protocol layers. Such interlinking between the lower and upper protocol layers means that support for upper protocol layers would have to be modified in response to modifications to implementation of the lower protocol layers. As a result, product development of software for upper protocol layers is made more complex.